Superior 3 and BFD3 in Ableton

[Michael Hage]

I’m using Ableton to host SD3 for live playing a midi drum set.
I have three channels with three different kits. They contain scenes with midi clip envelopes so that upon launch a scene will activate one kit while deactivating or turning off the other two kits.

When triggering scenes to switch kits, Ableton will stutter and the CPU meter will flash to +700% before settling in with the kit ready to play. I do this on the fly using a midi-mapped pedal. For live playing, this isn’t acceptable.

When I use the same setup with BFD3, the kit swap and scene launch is nearly instantaneous.
The SD3 and BFD3 kits are similar in size (kit pieces, cymbals, etc). Actually, the BFD3 kits have more pieces.

Just wondering if I’m missing a setting w/in SD3 that would cause the CPU hit or if Ableton just handles SD3 and BFD3 differently.

Thanks for any advice.

Topic

[Brad]

Off the top of my head; are these custom kits or standard presets (something I can test out). Are you loading samples from an SSD or HDD?

Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

[Olof Westman]

Sounds to me like you are running out of RAM. Make sure that you don’t
have any other memory hungry application running at the same time.

Olof Westman - Toontrack
Coder

[Michael Hage]

They’re custom kits for SD3 and BFD3.
I was going to try using stripped down kits for both programs and see if it makes a difference.
My gig computer is a laptop, loading BFD off the internal SSD and SD3 from a very fast external SSD. SD3 is so large I need the external drive. Perhaps it’s the internal/external drive making a difference. I’ll load BFD3 on the external for comparison.

I do know that when both VSTs are running on my desktop from a HDD, SD3 still chokes Ableton while BFD3 loads instantly.

[Michael Hage]

It does seem like a RAM issue, true. One of the first things I considered as well.

But I always restart the machine and run no other programs in the background. Especially when playing live.
The laptop has 8GB RAM, and the desktop 16GB.

[Brad]

What are your BFD3 settings (Buffer, RAM buffer, Stream buffer, Load into RAM, 16bit, etc.)
What are your SD3 settings (Cached, 16bit, Buffer, cores, etc)
As Olle mentioned it could be a resource (RAM) issue. When you load one of the SD3 kits causing grief how much RAM is it using?

Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

[Michael Hage]

Good questions. I’ll work it all again tonight and post tomorrow.
I do know that the SD3 kit I’m using will load at ~1750-1800mb depending upon which articulations are lit.

[Michael Hage]

I went back in to BFD3 and checked settings:
16384 for Stream/RAM buffer
Not loaded to RAM
64 Cache buffers
128 Voices/channel
16 bit mode OFF

SD3 Settings:
Cache mode both ON/OFF – has minimal effect on the load when switching Ableton scenes. CPU meter in Ableton still flashes to +700% before settling in.
4 Cores on desktop, 1 core on laptop
If loaded to RAM, the full sets are ~1750mb

Have run both SD3 and BFD3 from internal and then external SSD drives. No change at all in the way Ableton handles the SD3 kits.
I’m hoping to sort this out because nothing else sounds as good as SD3. But I can go back to using BFD3 for live playing where I need to swap kits. I did it for a long time.

[Author]

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